'Thanos Rising'

The character Thanos is one of the most feared villains in all of Marvel comics. Thanos is the same character who uses the Infinity Gauntlet to wipe out half of the living things in the universe at a snap of his fingers. Many people do not know what made this charter into who he is. Thanos Rising was a five-issue comic book series written by Jason Aaron and published by Marvel Comics. Aaron tells the story of how Thanos, an alien from the planet Titan, began as an innocent child who is disgusted by the idea of dissecting animals in his class and then became a calculating killer nicknamed "The Mad Titan." This series has elements of a Greek tragedy. Many factors make Greek tragedies such as the tragic hero, recognition, suffering, and a Greek chorus (Webster).

All Greek tragedy protagonists are tortured because of having both a hamartia and is doomed by fate. The tragic hero archetype is the protagonist but will inevitably fall. The hamartia of the protagonist is their fatal flaw or mistake that causes their downfall (Webster). Thanos’s hamartia is his lack of self-acceptance. While all the other people on Titan look human, Thanos does not exist because of genetic mutation. Since Thanos seems different from his peers, he decides to isolate himself from his classmates as he wants to know what caused his mutation. Thanos eventually meets a girl who uses his hubris to corrupt him by convincing him to start killing and doing autopsies on small animals that are different from their species. The girl tells Thanos to do this as they might have the same kind of mutation that he has. Finally answering the question that rages in his mind, “Why is my appearance different than the other children” (Aaron, 2013). No matter what animal Thanos kills, he never gets the answer to his question. Gradually, the girl convinces Thanos to pursue bigger victims where he was eventually killing and performing autopsies on Titan civilians. Finally, Thanos murders his mother, Sui-San, because he feels as though she might hold the answer. Thanos feels like once the answers that then maybe Thanos “won’t have to be a monster anymore” (Aaron, 2013).

Themes of fate punctuate the life of a tragic hero, as from the moment of their birth a prophecy dooms them (Webster). When Thanos was born A 'Lars, his father, saw past his child’s purplish rocky exterior and black and red eyes, A 'Lars instead remarked how beautiful the child was and denied the doctors wish to run experiments to find out why the child was different. On the other hand, when Sui-San saw her child, she tries to kill him with the knife that was used to cut Thanos’s umbilical cord. The reason being, “we have to kill it before it grows... If we don’t, we’re all going to die…! That isn’t my son that’s a monster” (Aaron, 2013)! This prophecy that Sui-San said turned out to be true as Thanos killed not only his parents, but Thanos exterminates every living thing on his planet. The prediction has now become true as Thanos has become the monster that his mother said he would become.

The protagonist of a tragedy will have some recognition, which is when the character realizes something that changes the way they view the world (Webster). Throughout the series, the audience sees that Thanos is in love with the same girl from his past. Thanos is so obsessed with this woman that he will do anything for her, including killing innocents. One day Thanos causes the genocide of a planet when one of the survivors ask why Thanos is doing this, Thanos tells him to ask the woman on his ship will be enough. When the alien comes back and says there is no woman, the woman reveals herself the physical personification of Death in disguise. Thanos is the only one who can see her. Thanos has the recognition that he loves Death. He even tells her, “You will love me no matter who has to die.” In his quest to earn her love, Death brought out the monster in Thanos. Death calmly tells a depressed Thanos, “You were born a monster Even your mother saw that. All I did was help you along.”

Finally, after a tragic hero undergoes recognition, there is a form of suffering where their epiphany destroys the character (Webster). His past tortures Thanos, thus he will never feel love. The pain begins when Thanos tells Death that he will murder anyone she wants so she can love him. Death tells Thanos to exterminate every single living being on his homeworld including A ‘Lars. Thanos does as asked, and Death kisses him. He felt no sense of love or passion. Here is a character that has done everything to try to get Death to love him the way The Mad Titian loved her. Thanos decimated planets, killing countless aliens, not his parents, but murdered the various children he had across the galaxy and their mothers. Therefore, he could quell the burning desire for love that once drove him. What Thanos earned instead was, “one question (that) now roared above the rest. What next?”

In all tragedies, there is a chorus, which comments on the characters of the story with dance, narration, and song or some combination of the three. There are three parts to a chorus. The first part is what is known as a parados. A parados is where the choir establishes the background of the character and or story. The series begins with Thanos visiting his decimated home world as he does, “once every solar cycle.” The chorus describes Thanos as a great powerful being who has “cosmic fire in his veins and the blood of a million worlds dripping from his fingers.” As Thanos walks over the bones of the dead people of this former “utopia,” the chorus tells the reader that he is responsible. These two descriptions establish Thanos as a man who should be feared and gives an excellent contrast to the Thanos the audience sees as a child.

The next part of a chorus is the stasimon; this is where the chorus comments on characters throughout the story (Webster). The stasimon in Thanos rising used as a way to fill information. For example, each issue takes place during a different time in Thanos’s life. The third issue tells what happened after Thanos killed his mother. How he traveled the galaxy having children with different alien women. The stasimon also shows how deadly Thanos is as “no one knows how many beings Thanos has murdered over the years. Least of all Thanos.” This quote shows how far Thanos has changed from the individual he was at the beginning of the series.

Chorus’s end in what is known as an exodus. An exodus is where the chorus wraps everything up and summarizes the story in one chant. The chorus narrates, “Thanos the Destroyer has come to Titan, to remember that he was once a boy who loved. And that everything he has done since, every world he has concurred, every dark miracle he has conjured, and every life he has taken…He has done so alone.” This quote summarizes not just who Thanos has changed as a character at the start of the series, as well as the loneliness that Thanos will never defeat.

Comics may appear to be simplistic on face value, but Thanos Rising proves this to be false. Thanos is born into the most into privileged area of his home but is doomed from birth to grow up and be feared instead of loved. Aaron makes sure that his audience understands this character and makes him sympathetic from the moment he was born. The various rejections Thanos dealt with both from his mother and his own personal life, which lead to Thanos’s path of future suffering. This work is a modern day Greek tragedy at its finest.

Works Cited

Aaron, Jason, writer. Thanos Rising. Illuss by Simone Bianchi. New York City: Marvel Comics, 2013, 20 November. 2015

Webster, Michael. “Tragedy: the Basics.” Reading the Iliad, faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/tragedy.htm.